Recent Faculty Activities (2013–2015)

Sallie
Han has published an article titled “The chemical pregnancy: Technology,
mothering, and the making of a reproductiveexperience”
in the Journal
of the Motherhood Initiative(Volume 5, Number 2). Based on
ethnographic research in the United States, the article examines the
significance of the so-called chemical pregnancy, which is inferred by the
detection of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in early pregnancy testing, but which develops
no further. What a woman might have described as a “late” period becomes
interpreted instead as an early miscarriage or a chemical pregnancy. The
article builds on feminist scholarship in anthropology, sociology, and science
and technology studies.

Tracy Betsinger is a coauthor of a paper entitled “Apotropaic
Practices and the Undead: A Biogeochemical Assessment of Deviant Burials in
Post-Medieval Poland” in the online journal PLoSOne. This study examines burials in a Polish
cemetery that indicated a belief in vampirism, such as sickles or rocks being
placed on the neck of the deceased to prevent their rising. The study looked at
strontium isotope ratios derived from the teeth of these burials to demonstrate
that they were local inhabitants and not migrants. While their reason for
special burial treatment remains unclear, it may be related to social factors,
such as being born out of wedlock, or biological factors that cannot be
observed on the skeleton, such as dying from cholera. The study has been
featured in a number of media, including USA
Today, NBC
News, the LA
Times, and Science
Daily, among others.

Tracy Betsinger co-organized an international symposium
entitled, “The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Human and Animal Deviant
Burials and their Cultural Contexts” at the recent meeting of the European
Association of Archaeologists in Istanbul, Turkey. She presented the paper,
“Biology or Culture: Determinants of Deviant Burials in Post-Medieval Poland”
as part of the session.

William Starna, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, has been
appointed the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Visiting
Professor in the Humanities at Hartwick College for
the Fall 2014 semester. In this capacity, he will
teach two courses: Histories of the Native Peoples of Eastern North America and
Seminar in Contemporary American Indian Communities. He will also deliver a
public lecture on a topic related to his on-going research on American Indian
issues.

Donald
Hill was interviewed as part of a show that aired on JAZZ90.1, a public
radio station in Rochester, NY. He was a guest on Jeff Harris’s “Big Road
Blues” show that focused on the jug band music of Gus Cannon (who was one of
the originators of jug band music and who recorded extensively in the 1920s),
and Hill’s recording of a Cannon performance. The show is available at:http://sundayblues.org/feeds/brb_3.9.14.mp3.